Providers of telecommunications services, such as AT&T, maintain various facilities, such as central offices, transmission hubs, and network operations centers, to name a few. Each such facility contains different types of telecommunications equipment, such as one or more switching systems, multiplexers, digital cross-connect systems, and/or transmission systems, for example. In addition to the various pieces of telecommunications equipment, each facility also contains various pieces of building infrastructure AC power equipment, such as transformers, switches, circuit breakers and the like. The pieces of AC power equipment collectively operate to provide power (typically, Alternating Current) to each piece of telecommunications equipment to enable such equipment to operate.
To ensure high reliability, each piece of telecommunications equipment in the facility must be maintained as well as each piece of power equipment. Failure to properly maintain even a single piece of power equipment, such as a circuit breaker or transformer, may cause that piece of equipment to fail prematurely. The failure of a single piece of power equipment may cause a loss of power to all or part of the telecommunications facility, causing all or part of the facility to fail. Depending on the volume of traffic carried by that facility, a loss of power can result in thousands, if not tens of thousands, of blocked calls, and a commensurate loss of revenue.
Some providers of telecommunications services do not undertake routine maintenance of power equipment, preferring to replace or repair such equipment upon failure. While this approach avoids the cost and effort associated with periodic inspection and maintenance, the loss of revenue associated with a single service outage often may exceed the savings achieved by not performing such maintenance. Moreover, even one service outage may severely damage the reputation of a telecommunications service provider regarding its reliability. To ensure high reliability and to minimize service outages, some providers of telecommunications service, such as AT&T, actively evaluate and maintain the power equipment in their facilities. In the past, such power equipment evaluation has proven cumbersome because of a lack of an organized approach towards tracking the status of each piece of equipment as well as an imprecise knowledge of whether each equipment piece is operating within the proper tolerances.
Thus, there is need for a technique for evaluating and maintaining the pieces of power equipment in a facility, and particularly, a telecommunications facility.